Athletes from 80 countries won at least one medal. The United States won the most medals overall with 93, as well as the most gold medals (37). Host nation Australia finished the Games with 58 medals overall (16 gold, 25 silver, and 17 bronze).[1]Cameroon, Colombia, Latvia, Mozambique and Slovenia won a gold medal for the first time in their Olympic histories, while Vietnam, Barbados, Macedonia, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, and Saudi Arabia won their first ever Olympic medals.[1]
The ranking sorts by the number of gold medals earned by a country—in this context, an entity represented by a National Olympic Committee. The number of silver medals is taken into consideration next and then the number of bronze medals. If, after the above, countries are still tied, equal ranking is given and they are listed alphabetically.
During the Games, Romanian gymnast Andreea Răducan won the gold in women's artistic individual all-around, but she was stripped of her gold medal after she tested positive for a banned substance. As so, her teammates Simona Amânar and Maria Olaru, originally won silver and bronze, upgraded to gold and silver, respectively. While Chinese gymnast Liu Xuan moved up to bronze.[2]
Three weeks after the games, Alexander Leipold of Germany was stripped of his gold medal after he tested positive for nandrolone, with the medal being reallocated to his American rival, originally second-placed Brandon Slay.[3]
American Marion Jones was stripped of her 3 gold and 2 bronze medals by the International Olympic Committee, after confessing that she had taken the anabolic steroidtetrahydrogestrinone before competing in Sydney.[4][5] The women's 100 metres gold medal has not been reallocated, because the presumed recipient, Ekaterini Thanou of Greece, was given a two-year ban for doping just before the 2004 Summer Olympics. After years of deliberations the IOC decided to upgrade 3rd and 4th placed athletes to silver and bronze, while not upgrading Thanou. Jones' teammates on the relay teams had their medals reinstated due to the fact that, according to the rules at the time, a team should not be stripped of a medal because of a doping offense by one athlete.[6]
On 2 August 2008, the International Olympic Committee stripped the gold medal from the U.S. men's 4x400-metre relay team after Antonio Pettigrew admitted to taking EPO. The IOC reallocated the gold, silver and bronze medals to the teams from Nigeria, Jamaica and the Bahamas, respectively.[7]
On 25 February 2010, The Associated Press reported that one of the members of the Chinese Gymnastic team was found to be under the minimum age limit set for competition. The governing body of the event, the International Gymnastics Federation, reported that it determined Dong Fangxiao to be 14 during the 2000 Olympics. The minimum age for competition was 16. The IGF invalidated the results of the competition in relation to the disqualified athlete. On 28 April 2010, the International Olympic Committee formally stripped the Chinese team of its bronze medal in the team event. The United States, which originally placed fourth, was awarded the bronze.[8][9]